State of mind. (standard:Psychological fiction, 2075 words)
Author: Lev821	Added: Jul 09 2005	Views/Reads: 3952/2600	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
There is no cure for this 'different' hangover.

When he awoke, the pain rushed immediately to greet him, and he cried
out, putting his hands to his head as the headache tore its way through 
his brain. He kicked out instinctively, knocking over an empty bottle 
of whisky. There were also empty bottles of vodka and cans of beer 
strewn around him. He lay on his back, staring at the ceiling, his 
vision slightly clarifying, but the pain remained. It was an effort to 
move, and eventually, with aching bones and tender muscles, he turned 
over and kneeled up, hands still clasped to his head. He was in his 
living room, which looked like it had hosted the wildest of parties. 
Empty pizza boxes and foam trays containing cold chips covered in curry 
were on the sofa, as well as half smoked cigarettes stubbed out and 
strewn around the place. The television had been knocked skewiff, and 
dvds had been thrown around, the discs no doubt used a Frisbees. He 
even saw a golf club lying amongst a smashed pint glass. The carpet, 
which was a light green, was stained brown with beer and tomato sauce. 
Through his migraine, through his pain, he could not remember anything 
about the merrymaking. Nothing, except when he was leaving a 
night-club. There was shouting, arguments. He remembered somebody 
approaching him with the angriest face he had ever seen, and he saw 
that that person was clutching a jagged bottle-neck, and that was it. 
No memories. He thought after that incident, he must have come back 
here to his house with his friends, and maybe their friends as well, 
and maybe some new friends they had made at the night-club, but 
something just did not click into place. He'd had many hangovers 
before, and within them he could always remember something about the 
previous night, and why wasn't he feeling sick? he wondered. A usual 
component of having a hangover is being bent over the toilet bowl 
coughing and spluttering up everything the stomach contains and usually 
more, but that feeling was not present. It was probably made up for by 
a more intense headache. Something wasn't right, he thought. Between 
the mental image of the bottleneck in the man's hand, and now, waking 
up, he guessed that obviously something had happened to him, something 
unpleasant, besides the hangover. Had he been stabbed? Is that why I 
can't remember?, he thought. Surely I would remember that. He looked 
down at himself to see if there were any wounds, or blood. He was in 
normal, casual clothes, clothes that he would wear to a night-club. 
Yet, they seemed as though they had been put on for the first time, 
rather like he had been trying them on in a shop cubicle and left them 
on. That was when he noticed the backs of his hands. They were not 
scarred, or damaged. They seemed different. They were white, virtually 
bloodless. He tried to make fists of them, and after a second or so, 
they did. Alcohol, he knew suppressed the central nervous system, so 
reaction time was considerably slower. At least he remembered three 
years ago when he had been caught and fined for drink-driving, but even 
so, in this case, two plus two seemed to make five. He had to find a 
mirror, and knew there was one in the hallway. He remembered that as 
well. He could remember, through his hangover, memories of things 
before his emergence from a night-club. Just everything but the 
previous night. 

He tried to stand, and did so like a newly born lamb, his balance
certainly off kilter. He didn't fall, and eventually stabilised in the 
middle of the living room, his head in his hands, breathing slowly and 
evenly, the pain subsiding only slightly. Again, as with his hand, the 
command for his legs to move forward took a second or two to comply, 
and he did so, falteringly, as a drunken lamb would, towards the open 
doorway.  He fell against the wall beside the door, composed himself 
again, and staggered out into the hallway. He saw the mirror, and the 
table beneath it, upon which was a telephone. Eventually making it to 
the mirror, and using the table like a zimmer frame, he stared at the 
reflection in the mirror. He could not comprehend at first what he was 
seeing. His understanding took longer to comprehend than his actions. 
“That's not me,” he said to himself. “That's not me. I don't look like 
that”. His face was white, bloodless, like his hands, his hair sparse, 
in strands, unkempt. He noticed a dark red line about an inch above his 
eyes, and fresh stitches along it, as well as beads of blood. Suddenly, 
out of the corner of his eye, he noticed someone coming quickly down 
the stairs. Before he knew what was happening, a syringe had been sent 
into his neck, and before his vision hazed and unconsciousness met him, 
he saw reflected in the mirror, in the corner of the hall, a cctv 
camera. 

The balding, rotund man who stood over him, watched as another man came
down the stairs, slowly, with a satisfied grin on his face. He wore a 
cheap suit that looked as though it had been plucked from a bin bag 


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